FCC Approving Pay-As-You-Go Internet Plans 414
An anonymous reader writes "As details emerge about the Federal Communications Commission's controversial proposal for regulating Internet providers, a provision that would allow companies to bill customers for how much they surf the Web is drawing special scrutiny. Analysts say pay-as-you-go Internet access could put the brakes on the burgeoning online video industry, handing a victory to cable and satellite TV providers. Public interest groups say that trend will lead to a widening gap in Internet use in which the wealthiest would have the greatest access."
Bandwidth huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA = about 20k
Web 2.0 crap plus ads= 1.6 megs
or some such
Lynx Lives Again!
A la carte cables (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny how cable companies all want us to pay as we go for internet access, yet still insist on pushing bundlings of hundreds of TV channels on us if we want to use cable TV.
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Ah, but you can only watch one channel at a time!
Untrue. I can watch as many channels as I have TVs.
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Sometimes more, with picture-in-picture and an analog connection for the low channels.
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or if you know what you're doing, you can watch probably 4-6 channels per TV.
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But you need a cable tuner for each of them. A box or a card. So they sell you service on a per-TV basis, too.
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Sensible answer: Since the reciever doesn't send a request for a specific channel, and can record one channel when you watch another, you must logically be getting every channel (including those you can't watch because they're scrambled). A sufficiently powerful digital box could grab all the feeds in parallel.
Max Headroom answer: If you compressed all the data sufficiently, you might very well be able to watch all the channels simultaneously. The brain's I/O bandwidth is probably greater than Comcast's.
Sil
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Since the reciever doesn't send a request for a specific channel
Not in the era of SDV switched digital video, where the channels are dynamically remapped based on what yer neighbors are watching.
Not much different from how movies on demand work, except that with SDV, multiple boxes can watch a stream.
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Sensible answer: Since the reciever doesn't send a request for a specific channel, and can record one channel when you watch another, you must logically be getting every channel (including those you can't watch because they're scrambled).
The cable companies also figured that out and they don't like it. No sir, not one bit. That's why they are rolling out SDV http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched_video [wikipedia.org]. When that finishes, every time you want to watch a channel you will have to ask them for it and then wait for it to be put on the feed to you.
If you thought channel-change delays were annoyingly slow as part of the change from analog to digital, wait until you're living with SDV. No more Al Bundy-speed channel changing for you.
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If that were the case.....
I'd get the phone line. Then attach a machine to the phone line that responds with annoyingly loud modem noise. I would then not care if my number is published and actively get that number on every telemarketer list possible.
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If the plans offer a reasonable limit on downloads then I don't see a problem with tiered service with an additional cost per GB (as long as the additional costs are reasonable which I highly doubt) then I don't see any problems with this. I know I'm being naive but it would be nice to pay less per month when I'm not using the inter
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Of course it wouldn't be this way, but as it is you pay say $50 for unlimited bandwidth. If you go to a tiered system shouldn't ~$50 be the maximum?
If I'm downloading 5Tb a month for $50 and someone else is doing 50M a Month for $50 then perhaps I'm not getting it cheap perhaps the other person is just getting ripped off.
Even if you consider the low use subsidizing the higher use (often refereed to as niche users) then those niche users may be charged $75 instead of $50 and the others charged less.
Of cours
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The thing with "hundreds of channels" in broadcast is you have ONE PIPE. Six thousand people are a matter of six thousand runs of cable off the nearest hub. The hub gets one stream to it.
With unicast IP traffic, however, you have 300 people accessing the same YouTube video. You cache the YouTube video so you don't have to pay your upstream provider. Then you down-link the same video 300 times to the hub, and out once to each user from there. Unless you're a Tier 1 telco, you're leasing the local line
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I guess my cable company doesn't offer that yet, because they laughed when I asked for 31-bit IP access, not the extended content available on the full 32-bit IP range.
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I know that media companies require the bundling of channels by cable companies. My question is why I can't simply choose to buy a bundle (for example, the NBC bundle you listed) instead of being forced to buy the 700 other channels the cable company offers. Those 700 other channels aren't required to be bundled with the NBC bundle.
The old days... (Score:2)
I remember when CompuServe charged $12/hour.
Then GEnie came along and charged $18/hour during business hours and $6/hour at night.
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It would also promote efficiency. 'unlimited' data leads to a lot of waste in my opinion. When there's some constraint on bandwidth (even relatively mild), it makes people consider cost/benefit of whatever they put/get online.
I might be okay with this on one condition... (Score:5, Insightful)
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The actual marginal cost for the individual channels is small, most of the cost to the cable company is the fixed cost for the connection. So, when you do get either pay-as-you-go (which would be everything is pay-per-view), or a-la-carte (pay per channel
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As much as I agree with you about al a carte cable TV, it would kill the over-the-top selection. It is the major/core channels that supplement the costs for all of the specialty channels that get included in the current packages.
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Except that cable and satellite boxes are also pretty low-power too. I know a TON of people who power off their TV when they're not watching it, but leave their cable/sat receiver on all the time. I'd wager a fairly significant percentage of the population would pretty quickly get hit with a bill saying they were watching TV 24/7, which they may have only been watching for a small fraction of that.
Re:I might be okay with this on one condition... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd go a step further...cable boxes and satellite boxes are pretty advanced....so I should only pay for the time that I'm watching the channels too.
Weeelll, you see, the thing is: It doesn't actually cost us anything let you access 10 of our channels vs 500 channels.
This is because Satellite TV transmits all channels all the time to just about everywhere around you. So, it really doesn't cost us anything more if you watch TV constantly instead of only 10 minutes a day, and satellite distribution to 1 million customers doesn't cost us any more than distribution to one customer.
We've successfully tricked most people into thinking that a huge price increase for twice the number of channels is reasonable when, in fact, all we do is change the DRM keys in your set-top box so that you can decode the extra channels that we are sending to you (and everyone else in your city) anyhow.
Oh, and extra monthly fee for having a 2nd set top box? Ha ha ha, we make you pay for the set-top box, then charge you extra per month for something that costs us nothing to transmit! People gladly hand us more money Hand over Fist, it's amazing how dumb they are!
With Cable it's a bit different, we pay to maintain the lines, but other than that, it's the same.
TV is a purely distribution only system, there is no "on demand". The Internet is a totally different beast (which we use to provide some on-demand services). With the Internet, we try to send you only the data you request. Actually, we don't do that, we send any data destined for your IP, whether you wanted it or not, so beware of DDoS attacks because your pay-as-you-go bill will be humorously expensive.
Problem (Score:2, Insightful)
They will also want to charge content creators on the same bandwidth so they can profit more on the same bandwidth, but not actually invest into upgrading their infrastructure to handle the traffic and thus negating the need to have tiered or metered plans.
Captialism, ho.
Sure, I'll take metered internet (Score:2)
You'll take metered internet... (Score:3)
You'll take metered internet (or not internet at all) when the providers serving your area decide that's the only thing they want to offer.
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Yet another bit of history repeating (Score:2)
When the commercial Internet started it was all PAYG at least in my corner of the world. You paid fixed price per connection and price per meg. Only large ISPs and their like managed to get fixed rate deals. Joe Casual user and Joe's Company Ltd paid per MB.
One of the first thing I had to write when I became employee No 6 in what was to become a large ISP in my country was exactly that - the traffic data collection, accounting and billing system.
The Telcos, Cablecos, etc _REMOVED_ all this when they entered
By use is fine if the prices are sane (Score:2, Funny)
I would say 10 cents a GB would be great. Those could even be per GB at a certain rate, or time of time. So they can sell higher speeds or different usage patterns.
How much does an isp pay? (Score:2)
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This varies a lot, Tier 1 providers just have peering points and own the equipment, they then trade carriage of each others data. Smaller providers rent OC lines and pay huge fees but are allowed to soak the line 24x7, then they oversell that.
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Teir 1's do not pay anything (but they have to actively manage there business to get the traffic fairly even) this is what makes a tier 1 a tier 1. In the medium market I can get a 1gb connect with a 1gb floor for $1k a month 10gb for 5k and I do not deal with anything over 10gb at a single location (few people do). So while all the cable companies (none of them are tier 1 networks in the US to my knowledge) might pay most of the DSL company's do not since they are mostly Tier 1 networks. Now people gene
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Lets remember they have there own cable plant to maintain (really no incremental cost from the cable or phone plants they all ready had) and piles of tech support for the clueless idiots that think there ISP is responsible for fixing there computer.
Re:How much does an isp pay? (Score:4, Informative)
ISPs don't pay per volume. The most common metric is a base price depending on the maximum throughput plus a variable price based on the 95th bandwidth percentile. [wikipedia.org]
A pretty accurate summary of buying transit. On the other hand, peering is a fixed monthly fee (usually quite low) to trade local traffic with your immediate physical neighbors almost always at zero per byte cost.
And of course ALL the other expenses of an ISP are constant per month. Electric, salaries, rent, equipment loan interest, private line interconnects, property taxes, etc ...
Wave goodbye to the industry (Score:4, Funny)
>Analysts say pay-as-you-go Internet access could put the brakes on the burgeoning online video industry,
No, it won't. Like advanced cellphone systems earlier this century the industry will simply move to where it is viable. America will limp on with inferior general service then deny that the service is inferior and proclaim it a world besting triumph of technology.
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Pretty much this.
Technology will develop where it can. It will not develop where it cannot. Simple as that.
There is a very good reason why there are so few high tech companies are in Africa. Why? Because the infrastructure just plain sucks. Unreliable power, hard to get internet, logistics a nightmare... if you want the same, go ahead. Companies, especially those dependent on readily available and cheap internet technology, will go to countries where, well, internet technology is available and cheap. Europe
How Depressing. (Score:2)
Seriously, why do we have to pay more as improvements in technology drive the costs towards zero?
I don't much care if we go to a "Pay as you go" as long as the cost of such access continues to drive towards zero the same way everything else with computer systems has done historically. However, if we do not have competition, and we allow the big companies to erect huge barriers to entry against competition, then not only will this cost us as consumers, but will bash our ability to compete in the world, and
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why do we have to pay more as improvements in technology drive the costs towards zero?
Because that's what the capitalist economic model is all about.
From each according to his ability to pay, to each according to his ability to avoid paying.
The $14.95 DSL days are finally ending (Score:2)
We have been the victims of market share building exercises since 1995. The concept of offering service to people at rates that are unsupportable doesn't work long term. Clearly.
The problem with IPTV is the physical capacity on both cable and DSL doesn't exist. You can't support a star configuration fed from the head end where the combined bandwidth at the "node" is higher than can be served with any reasonable physical connection. The way things have been built today doesn't support IPTV even at fairly
Party in my Car (Score:2)
Ad Blocking (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ad Blocking (Score:5, Interesting)
> my hosts file is gonna get big fast, adblock
> and javascript blocking will become required
> addons for all my web browsers.
That is a very accurate assessment. My ISP sells throughput in "units", dimensioned in GB. The cardinality of a "unit" varies by time of day and week, so that usage is shaped to conform to the ISP's costs ( they make it very easy to monitor and estimate usage ).
Although we don't have much chance of consuming a 125 GB "off-peak unit", an 8GB "peak unit" is much easier to burn-through and Privoxy is therefore laden with rules. There's no point disabling the proxy only for off-peak hours..
In fact my partner will summon me if she sees any form of online ad; since its appearance is so unexpected she wonders if "something has gone wrong".
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Its framed as a war between the content providers and the monopoly last mile providers. But the real economic war will be between the ad networks aka google and the monopoly last mile providers.
Got what ya wanted (Score:4, Interesting)
Here ya go, net-neutrality proponents: a per-byte charge. Did you really expect otherwise?
Might be Amusing.... (Score:2)
I Fear $50 + The Meter (Score:5, Informative)
There's two reasons for consumption based-billing:
1. Make Netflix a lot less inexpensive in order to keep the profit line strong on their own video offerings.
2. Raise prices. Consumption based billing won't be less expensive for people who are light users because broadband service will be $50 for the privilege of having the coax terminate at the house, and *then* you pay what the meter says. And it won't be cheap; I would not rule out several dollars per gigabyte. By doing so, the ISP has a nice fat recurring revenue stream for doing absolutely nothing, and a service pricing structure that encourages you not to use the service.
I don't have a problem with consumption based billing. I have a problem to the GOTHCA! capitalism of having Wall Street and its corporate minions finding yet another way to fleece the public.
Spam anybody? (Score:2)
Let me get this straight, an ISP could bill you for forwarding your email spam that you didn't want in the first place? Looks like they have zero incentive to do anything to prevent it.
The reason this is dumb (Score:2)
Bandwidth isn't like gas. Nobody's mining extra bandwidth or depleting our nation's bandwidth reserves. The cost of data transfer, for a provider, doesn't scale linearly with customer use like a commodity might; up to a certain capacity, it should cost them more or less (not exactly, but close to) the same to operate a network at peak capacity or one at lower than peak capacity. So if I'm transferring 1 MB/hr or 1000 MB/hour, as long as the network isn't being overtaxed and slowed down by my usage it should
This makes sense IF THE RATES ARE REASONABLE (Score:3)
As long as the per-byte rate is in line with current costs, I don't see the problem with it. Moving bits costs money, and moving more bits costs more money. I've always thought broadband providers should behave more like public utilities given their government endorsed monopoly of the infrastructure.
If we paid by the byte, it would eliminate the need for arbitrary data caps. If I want to pull down a terabyte in a week, I can. I just pay more than my neighbor who only downloaded a few GB in that same week. That seems fair, right?
The problem though, as it always is with telcos, is that the pricing will NOT be fair. The cable companies in particular are trying desperately to make a grab for the lost revenue in their PPV and other cable TV cash cows as people opt for cheaper alternatives like Netflix.
Why do I feel like I'm gonna get screwed by this? (Score:2)
I was just talking to a coworker about this.
I use an above-average amount of bandwidth. Between Netflix and gaming and youtube and the occasional bittorrent, I feel like, without having any hard numbers at-hand because Comcast's bandwidth meter can't be found on their website (despite their steamroller media blitz that hyped up how proactive it makes people at watching their usage. Way to fail, Comcast,) I fall on the higher end of the usage spectrum but nowhere near the 250gb/month cap; probably 80gb -
Welcome back (Score:2)
What's wrong with QoS? (Score:2, Informative)
You pay for a specific pipe already. If the ISPs and core routers enabled fair-service curve, each pipe would get a fair chance at the upstream pipe. Heavy users would then not swamp lighter users and lighter users would not subsidise heavy users. This eliminates all of the (somewhat technologically ignorant) objections raised by ISPs and by some of the posters here. Then you add in ECN, which instructs a machine to throttle back if it is behaving badly on the network (and blocks machines that won't play fa
Re:The U.S. Constitution (Score:5, Insightful)
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In most cases I'd agree with you (e.g., anti-marijuana laws), but you don't think the internet has anything to with interstate commerce? Never heard of eBay or Amazon?
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The government's meddling in business is what has kept this from occurring ten years ago, champ. Note that this is the FCC considering a RULE CHANGE. If the FCC had never been around to create such a rule, we would have already seen this happen.
Having said that, I'm very, very, very cautiously optimistic that this will only have a short-term effect. Streaming HD (in my case, via Netflix) has gone from a "that would be cool" to something I do almost every day within three years, and despite my /. account, I'
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If anything, this will be an incentive for ISPs to start trying to build out their networks and actually make an effort to deliver as many bytes as possible, since suddenly extra network capacity becomes extra earning potential, rather than something they just have to maintain in order to keep people from leaving.
The actual per-byte price will have to be competitive if they don't want to lose all their customers - but imagine if Comcast's engineers started looking at things like Netflix as a sales opportuni
Re:The U.S. Constitution (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is what will happen in monopoly broadband markets. If there is no competition, they can still jack up the per MB rates so they get the same amount of revenue, or even higher until the network congestion is reduced because it costs so much to use. There is no infrastructure improvement incentive there, and no market forces to lower the price.
Maybe the FCC should limit the use of per-MB pricing to areas where there is actual competition and to no-cancellation-fee service. This would include most mobile services but exclude fixed installations in places where per-MB pricing would do more harm than good. It might even give an incentive for companies and governments to revoke some monopolies.
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In order to provide you with better service, we are moving you from the Unlimited(tm)* plan over to our metered service. Our metered service will charge a dollar per gigabyte. A gigabyte can hold ten full length movies** or six hundred thousand songs***. We feel that this is fair pricing and if you want to use any more bandwidth you're free to go to dialup or start your own service provider.
*Unlimited means 250GB/month
** In 100x100 resolution @5fps
*** In MIDI format
Re:The U.S. Constitution (Score:4, Informative)
[The Congress shall have the power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, among the several States, and with the Indian tribes
Article I, Section 8.
The interstate commerce clause is frequently misused - but telecom and the Internet seems to clearly be interstate commerce.
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Article I section 8 goes on to say:
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
It's called the "Elastic Clause" for a reason... you can use it to justify practically anything. From there it's a matter of what "necessary" and "proper" really mean, which is arbitrarily difficult, but it should suffice to shut down the "but
Re:The U.S. Constitution (Score:5, Insightful)
This mis-interpretation is pretty much exactly how that clause has made the Constitution completely meaningless.
It was a harmless little addendum that pretty much everyone considered perfectly safe. The point was to keep trade "regular" among the States. So that, for example, Virginia isn't allowed to attach extra tariffs to goods passing through from New York.
Now everyone thinks it means "Congress can do anything it wants.
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The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It used to just be patched by them but politics has allowed it to be fully paved several layers deep.
Re:The U.S. Constitution (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm looking at it and it says "to regulate commerce", not "to regulate trade wars". If one of the reasons was to prevent trade wars, then it succeeds, sometimes. If another was to ensure the equitable distribution of federally-funded trade protections and infrastructure improvements, then it succeeds, sometimes.
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I'm looking at it and it says "to regulate commerce", not "to regulate trade wars".
Trade wars are about commerce.
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More than likely it went down something like this:
Founding Father A: No way man, commerce should be the States' business!
Founding Father B: I totally agree dude, but what if the states don't agree? What if they start trade wars and shit? That's bad news man, and we have no way to fix it! The Congress needs to be able put a stop to that man!
Founding Father A: Oh dude, you're right! I didn't think about that! How we make Congress the arbitrators of trade disputes?
Founding Father B: Alright dude, that sound
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No, but your paying for it does. Unless you only use an ISP based in your state to access DNS servers in your state to access websites hosted in your state. And even then, it's not likely (my first jump via tracert goes to Illinois, and I live in Wisconsin).
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Unless they all collude and the FTC (with the actual teeth) doesn't step in, or if it is decided that it isn't c
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I think it's important to note what's been pointed out many times here on slashdot.
In many, many areas there isn't another ISP to jump ship to - there is only one, or dialup.
That's not much of a choice in my book.
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what is to stop an ISP from just doing things as SOP (flat-rate) and making hand over fist when all the streamers, gamers, downloaders jump ship of the ISPs bilking them from the new model?
Nothing, except that most of those people won't actually be able to jump ship, since, if they're lucky, they'll be choosing between two providers who both have pay-as-you-go plans. Your idea assumes people can easily switch to a new provider, which when it comes to high speed internet in the U.S. isn't generally the case.
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What about the ISPs of ISPs? Will T1's get usage costs, too? Where does it end? Can the owners of the trunk lines charge for usage? Will the government start taxing Internet usage?
The scary part is that usage costs can trickle upstream very easy. You pay your ISP for usage and then they have to pay their upstream for usage, etc., etc., etc. How many times can the same data be charged for? This could easily cascade into an Internet meltdown. Especially if you consider other countries might be charged
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I think you're looking at this from the wrong perspective. It isn't the ISPs that are pushing for it, even though they will benefit...
It's the MIAA and RIAA that are pushing for it. They're banking on making it expensive to pirate media in order to diminish how often it happens!
Re:The U.S. Constitution (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you're looking at this from the wrong perspective. It isn't the ISPs that are pushing for it, even though they will benefit...
It's the MIAA and RIAA that are pushing for it. They're banking on making it expensive to pirate media in order to diminish how often it happens!
I think this would encourage piracy. If a person has to pay as they go, wouldn't it be cheaper to download a single compressed file, maybe even of lower quality, instead of streaming with commercials & all the other crap?
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@Anonymous Coward
Actually, states can't create their own communications commissions and still be operating within the Constitution. As Kenji said, this is clearly an interstate commerce issue, which is a power that was explicitly given by the Constitution to Congress, not the states. In any case, do you think it is conducive to commerce at all to have to contend with 50 separate communications commissions all having conflicting regulations about how interstate communications can be undertaken?
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Technically, the companies should be able to charge whatever they want, and the playing field should be a level one with multiple choices so the consumer can choose which company it wants to get service from. Theoretically, this is how capitalism is supposed to work, and if it was left alone to work, it would do just fine. But then the FCC and Congress has to fuck up and get involved and consumer choice goes tits up in regulated monopolies.
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The Congress shall have Power - To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
and the Commerce Clause:
[The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.
. The two basically provide a (legally if not logically) solid defense against unconstitutional takedowns in the supreme court, plus the fact that the supreme court hasn't been all too active in judicial review of late. Also, as a side note, the constitution is not an
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Electric is nothing like this, more than 60% of my bill is some sort of non-variable having electricity fee.
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Try our water bill..the envy of the cablecos...
$84 for $3.71 worth of water :/
Makes me want to strangle the fools saying internet should be a utility :O
At least 50% of my internet bill is not for getting rid of waste bits.
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Yeah, the other 40%. Which means I spend more on some sort of flat rate that the gp would call "marxist", please ignore the fact that this makes no sense as he is pretty uneducated.
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> Which means I spend more on some sort of flat rate that the gp would call "marxist"
Not all flat rates are bogus. Yes there IS a cost involved with just having an electric meter. The electric company has to maintain the fixed infrastructure to service a customer regardless of usage. The billing department's expenses are pretty much fixed per account, etc. There are fixed regulatory fees to pay, etc. When the fixed portion is so high though you should be a bit suspicious that they haven't bribed some
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Tle old International Packet Switch Stream used pay-as-you-use and it was in a hell of a lot more countries than the Internet, with far more secure services. It died.
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They're just abusing their monopoly (sometimes a geographic monopoly, sometimes regulatory too) to extract more money from you. There's nothing good and righteous and wonderful about that,
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I already pay for use by buying the top-tier bandwidth option and fitting into their stochastic model of peak usage.
But usage patterns have changed and they think they can ask for more money because now I'm using my Internet as a TV, which is outside the stochastic model they used to produce the cost apportioned to me when they set the tiered pricing model.
But the resource isn't actually scarce. I paid for unlimited usage of a 30-mbps link. It will be scarce when I need to get more than 30 mb of data into
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EVERY utility?
So my Aunt Ethel, who talks on the phone 3 hours a day, pays more than my Aunt Mildred, who makes 2 phone calls per month?
I bet they'd be surprised to know that.
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Lets examine the rest of the utility world. Do we have flat rate electricity? No. Do we have flat rate water? No. We sometimes have flat rate sewer but more often it is tied to water consumption on the assumption that most of your water eventually goes down the drain.
Except internet access is generally not considered "utility", nor is internet access based on a consumable resource.
Other than periodic upgrades of infrastructure (pushed by higher demand for their services and increasing numbers of users) - costs for the providers ARE flat.
Now, overselling their capacity and then blaming their users for "hogging" - isn't that kinda like false advertising?
How was that covered in your "econ 101"? Or should the customers just "deal with it"?
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I do so love a challenge. Here's some examples of the theory:
Yes: your framing (Score:2)
Many/most electricity bills are being split: one part is production, one part is delivery. While most consumers use the same company for both, many opt for an alternative producer of those kWh different from the company owning/installing/maintaining the wiring for delivery. That industry has worked out the division, and worked out the billing (often onto one bill few examine).
Internet already splits that: you pay (often $0) the producer of those bytes (Google, CNN, Netflix, whatever) separate from the compa
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...If the rates are fair...
There's the rub. The rates won't be fair. At least not in a neighborhood like mine where the cable company has a monopoly. The rates aren't fair already.
Re:Man, if only... (Score:5, Insightful)
Electricity and gas are unlike bandwidth. They are limited in a way bandwidth isn't. If you use a unit of gas, you have to generate more. On the other hand, if you use a unit of bandwidth there's another unit waiting for you. Conversely, if you don't use a unit of gas you can save it for later. If you don't use a unit of bandwidth it's gone forever, and it costs the same to maintain the network whether you use it or not.
Pricing structure should encourage people to conserve gas and electricity. Networks (computer and phone) have to be maximally utilized to provide the lowest cost per packet. Pricing per megabyte discourages maximal utilization which leads to waste.
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I don't know. I'm paying $50 per month + taxes (so more than you). I also have a rented modem (though that cost isn't itemized), and only 3 Mbps, so slower than you. I am however, uncapped, which I guess is a big plus. Still, for the bandwidth I have, I feel like I'm overpaying quite a bit.
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What you are saying is that what we have today is good enough for the future, as far as the eye can see. You do not want to watch videos on Youtube, you do not want programming delivered over the Internet, you do not want news delivery via podcasts over the Internet, or real time maps, or traffic/weather reports.
I do not "fund your hobby" when you watch all the sports channels 24/7, and you do not "fund my hobby" when I watch YouTube videos all day. But when TelcomX charges you a flat rate to deliver "Spo
Re: (Score:3)
I remember the days when I'd have to let a 1 min video buffer for 30s before I could watch it. Why not do that for super cheap, then let people pay more for 5Mbs, and even more for 50Mbps?
What compelling argument is there that it matters at all how much I am able to download in one month at 1Mbps or even 56k? I understand that n